


Knock

by Wecanhaveallthree



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Stasis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:42:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25179391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wecanhaveallthree/pseuds/Wecanhaveallthree
Summary: Musing on the upcoming Stasis powers in Destiny 2.
Kudos: 7





	Knock

Embers shouldn’t travel too far from the forge.

Little sparks and cinders cannot survive outside that nurturing warmth, that well of heat. Some may shine on a little, afterwards. Some may glimmer and glow for a moment on the cold floor, or flute upwards on rising fire like will-o-wisps. All an illusion. In the sky, they are indistinguishable from the far-off stars, already cold and dead before their final light winks out. That is the fragility of the Traveller’s great gift - the Traveller’s great lie.

She should have died on Mercury. That would have been right and proper. Another smear of lightless ash steeped about the Burning Shrine. The proud Sunbreaker legacy, clinging tenaciously to Cabal boots.

But the Cage had not waited for Guardians to find familiar footholds for their valorous last stands. She, like many others, had been caught in the void - too distant to die at the Tower, or rebuild the Farm, or battle the resurgent Darkness on the core worlds. She had spent the Red War in a cramped planet-hopper sucking at vac-sealed ration packs, scanning Vanguard frequencies, and arriving too late to a dozen battlefields.

Titans had a reputation for being difficult to move. Not physically, as anyone who had been in the impact crater of a leaping Striker could attest, but ideologically. Philosophically. She had believed that a wall would manifest itself, that resistance would form, and that she would then slot neatly into place. A good little brick. Zavala would be proud.

She had held herself in readiness for that moment. A painful stasis, when every instinct screamed to take the fight to the foe. She trusted in her leaders. She trusted in the Traveller. Salvation would manifest itself, as it always had.

She had been a fool.

When she saw the vid-capture of Ghaul’s defeat, when the majesty of the Traveller was awakened once more, she did not feel awe. When the Light flooded back, she had been crawling through pickets about the Reef, and she did not feel joy. Only shame, at first. Then regret. Then anger.

Why had the Traveller not smote the Red Legion in the first instance? Why had it allowed itself to be caged, to rob its children of their Light, their hammers and shields? So many had died - civilian and Guardian both - that the fragile existence of humanity had seemed to teeter once more on the knife’s edge of extinction. It had not roused itself for them.

Only when the Dominus had sought to wrest its essence from the eggshell had it struck.

Only to save itself.

The realisation had crushed her. It pushed her into the darkest holes and most dangerous sectors of the system, in search of death and answers. All the helplessness she had felt, all the despair, all the impotent rage, she channelled into a fire to retake the ground humanity had lost. She burned, within and without, her eyes turned always to the flame’s uncaring source. She fed that burning with the meat and marrow of her being: the hopes and dreams and cares and scorns, the friendships and rivalries, the contests and triumphs.

All the things that had made her so weak, so helpless, she fed to the fire so that she would always be strong. No glories. No victories. No companions.

When she came at last to Io, she was little more than Titan-shaped tallow.

She will walk through the nautiloid shells, the great waves and curves of forgotten oceans, in silence. There is a voice that speaks, and another that dismisses, and another that whispers, but she will not hear. Her steps do not leave imprints in the dust, nor bend the struggling stems of strange flora.

The ancient sea will rise to meet her, and dark mountains will tower over her, their slopes flecked with something that could be forest-green, one face always hidden. She will stand on the faded quartz of fossil-sands and she will lift her hand - her fist, reversed - in silhouette, somewhere beyond the Light, somewhere before the Dark.

And she will not burn.


End file.
